|
Adelina von Dobermann Blog Entry |
|
June 3, 2022, 5:48:16 AM July 3, 2024, 1:20:06 AM 6/3/22: r/SketchDaily theme, "Bells/Free Draw Friday." (I did Free Draw Friday since it gives me the chance to practice my characters.) This week's character from my anthro WWII series is Adelina Dobermann, AKA Addy, AKA Lina (but only to her mother and to very close family friend Lt. Gunter Hesse, whom she thinks of as an uncle). She grew up in a rich, influential household and was pretty sheltered from the world (Hesse being a main perpetrator of this), so although being kind and idealistic, she's also rather spoiled and very naive about all the horrible stuff that's actually going on around her. She has a very big, dangerous secret that even she doesn't know about at first. There'll be more about her later in my art Tumblr and Toyhou.se. Regarding her design: She's a black-and-tan (rust) Doberman pinscher with natural ears, and lookswise, she takes after her mother. (Her father has blond or light brown hair (haven't decided yet) and blue eyes and cropped ears). Her hair right be a bit wavier than this. (EDIT, made a few tiny fixes to the linework and reuploaded, sorry.) TUMBLR EDIT: Okay, Addy Dobermann...I've put off typing up this one because there really isn't much to say that the above, and my previous entry (Sophie Sommer's, which ended up being about Gunter Hesse), didn't already cover. Addy simply isn't a very interesting/developed character. But here I go anyway. Addy's parents are, of course, "Inspector" Louis Dobermann and his wife Inga. Dobermann is the last remaining member of an old wealthy family, likely Junkers, who owns a great estate and lots of land out in the country; Inga married into this. Inga? She's Jewish. That might not sound like much until you recall this story is set in 1930s-40s Germany. So...yeah. Dobermann wasn't aware of this when they married because Inga isn't practicing and it was never a big part of her life, but it's not like the Nazis care about distinctions like that. Inga spends a good deal of time wondering whether it's worth revealing her secret to anyone; when Lt. Hesse, a family friend who feels he owes the Dobermanns a debt, decides to join the SS, she makes up her mind. Nobody can know, because she doesn't believe there's anyone she can trust. After all, she thought she and Hesse were quite close. Hesse is actually much closer to Inga's daughter, Adelina. No, not in any pervy way. Flash back a bit. Since he's staying at the Dobermann estate recovering from war injuries and a morphine addiction, he's there when Addy joins the family, and promptly falls in love with the baby girl. No, not in any pervy way. Following the Great War, Hesse has been kind of adrift trying to figure out what his place in the world is, since he's no longer a soldier and the Dobermanns have each other, yet he has no one. (It's hinted he might have been attracted to Inga, but he never told her, and not long after she and Dobermann married. No one ever mentions this, and Dobermann and Inga both trust each other, so although she spends a lot of time in Hesse's company it's never seen as inappropriate, and he never displays any interest in her.) An odd little complication to this is a childhood fantasy Hesse once had of being a noble knight, chosen by a maiden to defend her. Also, he grew up in an orphanage. He keeps his eyes open for this mythical maiden who's supposed to choose him, but has never seen any sign of her. Nobody's ever chosen him so it rather stings. When Inga brings home the new baby ("Louis insists on calling her Addy, but to me she's little Lina") and lets Hesse hold her, she grasps his finger. "It looks like she's chosen you," Inga says with a smile. Hesse just stares at "little Lina." Is it her? Is she the maiden he's supposed to defend? He'd assumed she'd be...older, and in love with him. But he isn't sure how these things work, so he decides this will do. Dobermann is always busy doing...stuff (I really don't know what), and Inga is often busy helping him with his stuff, which leaves much of Addy's life to Hesse. (Like Inga, he calls her Lina, instead.) He doesn't mind. She gives him a nice distraction from his physical and emotional pain. Since he has trouble sleeping, he often hears her cry at night and takes her for walks around the manor (which also helps his injured hip), singing old German lullabies he himself had once had sung to him in the orphanage. As she gets older, he tells her the same old tales he was told, of noble knights and fair maidens, and Addy has the same dream he once had, that she can find a knight to fight for her. Although properly girly and not technically a tomboy, she's an adventurous sort who spends lots of time exploring the estate, making believe, and occasionally annoying the staff with her overexuberant attitude. The normally staid and serious Hesse puts up with everything she does, and occasionally joins in her adventures, even though the others think it's kind of odd. Whenever she gets upset, he's the one who's there to listen, so his influence starts to rub off on her. Part of that influence happens to include some rather dark and unpleasant feelings about the state of the country and who's to blame for it. Meaning, the Jews. Inga doesn't notice this until it's become rather ingrained. By then, much of the rest of the country is starting to feel the same way. There's nothing really she can do about it. When it starts to look as if war is on the horizon, Hesse leaves to join the Waffen-SS (this and the war both form much earlier in my story than in reality) (and perhaps technically this should be called the SS-Verfügungstruppe?); the adolescent Addy is heartbroken to lose her only friend (yeah...kind of sad that someone like Hesse is literally her only friend), though he promises he'll come back to her. (She's his maiden, after all, right?) War does break out, and Hesse is gone for longer than intended, though he does send letters which Addy always receives and reads with great excitement. Aside from "Uncle Gunter's" absence, she doesn't really feel the effects of the war at the isolated estate, and doesn't bother to think much about what it might mean for others. In fact it seems almost like another great adventure, and she looks forward to the day when Hesse returns to tell her all the tales of what he's done. It's a few years before this finally happens, and not quite in the manner Addy had expected. Hesse returns to the Dobermann estate wounded and limping again; he seems dispirited, though he does light up a bit when Addy runs to throw her arms around him (which really freaking hurts). He can't believe how she's grown up. Although glad to see her and to be back at the estate, he doesn't seem interested in telling war stories, in fact, seems more interested in just forgetting. Addy doesn't understand this, but she doesn't pry. Inga tells Hesse that she knows it isn't what he wanted, but she's glad he won't be returning to the front. The SS isn't done with Hesse, though. He's offered a transfer a separate branch, the Allgemeine-SS, which deals mostly with bureaucracy and paperwork. Seems harmless, right? Well...not really. These are the guys investigating breaches of "racial hygiene," fancy talk for Aryan Germans consorting with forbidden types like Jews and Roma. Kind of like...exactly what Dobermann did, when he married Inga and fathered Addy. Inga is fully aware of the danger living right under their roof, though Dobermann, Hesse, and especially Addy are clueless. She's also already heard whispered stories about what the SS has been up to, and it involves rounding people up, placing them on trains, and taking them away. First the story was that they were being deported to other countries. But after the camps started appearing, that story changed. There's such a camp at the edge of the city nearest the Dobermann estate, though it's a smallish labor camp and not an extermination camp; prisoners are occasionally transferred to other camps from there. It's from here that Dobermann returns one day with Tobias Schäfer, who was a doctor before it became illegal for Jews to be doctors. Schäfer was due to be executed when Dobermann literally bought him, for the price of a fancy tapestry. Inga and Addy are curious about the newest member of the household. ("Do you eat babies?" Addy asks him, and Inga is all O_o;; ) (For what little it's worth, I don't think Hesse is the one who gave her that particular idea; he hates the Jews but he isn't completely delusional. Other Nazis often visit the estate and it's likely she chats with them.) Lt. Hesse, on the other hand, is livid. He tries to talk Dobermann into taking the doctor back, but relents when Dobermann makes it damn clear he has no intention of doing any such thing, and since Hesse has been staying with them purely due to Dobermann's courtesy, and has his own city apartment provided by the SS now, he can kindly f**k off and leave if he doesn't like it. (Yeah...obviously, Hesse gets along much better with Inga than with her husband.) Hesse does let Schäfer know, privately, that he'll be keeping a close eye on him, and pointedly calls him "Herr Schäfer" rather than "Herr Doctor." He also stipulates that Dr. Schäfer has to wear a yellow star on his clothes even though he's part of the Dobermann household now; Dobermann himself can't do anything about this, other than ensure he's fully protected while under their roof. Addy has picked up some bad ideas about the Jews but isn't quite spiteful, yet. She's more curious about Dr. Schäfer than anything. In her typical manner she ends up making friends with him. In an odd turn of events, Hesse warms to him somewhat as well after Schäfer treats him for a serious injury, although they both keep a respectful distance from each other, for obvious reasons. Addy hangs on every word Hesse says, so she tries to figure out why he and the doctor can't get along too well; despite his views, Hesse never deliberately tried to indoctrinate Addy, and in fact has gone out of his way to try to shield her from the more unpleasant aspects of the war, including his exact role in it. Addy genuinely believes the SS are the modern equivalent of the old noble knights who defended Germany from its enemies. Hesse does nothing to disabuse her of this idea. In fact he lies like crazy to help maintain Addy's hopelessly naive view of the world. He's very good at it, so good in fact that he occasionally passes time at the Dobermann estate still indulging Addy's (and his) childish fantasies of knights and maidens, while at the same time ordering the torture and execution of citizens accused of aiding the Jews, including a neighbor of the Dobermanns'. Addy has no idea. She just knows she likes the peaceful sound of the trains passing by at night (when she asks why there are more of them now than there used to be, Hesse says they're carrying soldiers and supplies for the war effort, of course), and she's developed a very strong crush on Hesse, whom she views no longer as like an uncle but as an ideal husband. (He doesn't notice or acknowledge this at first. She's still little Lina to him.) Addy also gets acquainted with several Wehrmacht soldiers who stay at the Dobermann estate as part of an agreement Dobermann has with the military to protect his assets. These are Sgt. Alger Holt, who is older and somewhat jaded but not bitter like Hesse is; Lt. Senta Werner, whose rank is honorary (her family is rich and influential like the Dobermanns so this was probably some kind of favor) since women generally aren't allowed to fight in the military, yet she wears a uniform and is pretty skilled at fighting and takes her skills very seriously (she's also pretty outspoken, frequently and intentionally embarrassing the naive and proper Addy with her blunt sexual remarks); Sgt. Wilhelm Volker, a friendly young Nazi who is romantically interested in Addy yet she doesn't really notice; PFC Konrad Helmstadt, the youngest of the bunch, efficient and helpful in keeping things running smoothly yet very serious and standoffish (turns out he and Senta have an informal little thing going); and newcomer Sgt. Stephen Gerhardt, who is actually an American spy...and is Jewish. Gerhardt is in contact with the Diamond Network. Certain details I'm giving here are out of order, so let me back up a bit again. By the time Gerhardt joins the household, Inga is dead...supposedly. Not really--but neither Addy nor Hesse knows this. Er...? Well, Inga got to be good friends with Dr. Schäfer...and ended up confiding her secret in him. When she laments not being able to help somehow, Schäfer tells her to speak with a neighbor and request to be shown the "Jack of Diamonds." Inga is perplexed, but obeys. Her normally cheery neighbor suddenly turns serious and ashen faced at this request and asks where Inga heard about the Jack of Diamonds; Inga is ready to give up on whatever this is, but her neighbor hesitantly arranges for her to return the next day after nightfall, adding that she can't guarantee the Jack of Diamonds will agree to meet with her. Inga realizes she's talking about a person. She returns the next night and is introduced to a man in a Wehrmacht uniform, though it turns out this is just a disguise and he's not in the military. His name is Josef Diamant, and once Inga learns this, he needs no introduction. EVERYONE knows who Josef Diamant is, even though almost nobody knows what he looks like. Once a jeweler, he started forging documents to aid Jews in escaping the country, and the SS ended up gutting his shop, torturing him with his own jeweler's tools, and shipping him off to the labor camp. (The husk of his shop still stands in the city as a reminder and a warning, the "Der Juwelier" in the window crossed out and replaced with "Der Jude.") There, he was the ringleader of an elaborate plot to trick the commandant into letting down his guard, after which he murdered him and escaped via a secret passageway with the aid of the commandant's stepdaughter. (She had her own reasons for wanting him dead.) He, she, and the handful of other inmates who escaped formed the core of what soon became known as the Diamond Network, a large but loose organization of Jews, escaped prisoners, refugees, other Nazi targets, and sympathizers who utilize the hidden rooms and passageways in their homes to shuttle Nazi victims to safety, as well as engage in occasional acts of what the SS has deemed terrorism. This arm of the Network uses the names of playing cards to refer to specific important individuals (Diamant being the Jack of Diamonds, for example; the labor camp commandant and adjutant the King and Jack of Clubs, things like that), and Diamant is the single individual most wanted by the Nazis. No decent photos exist of him, and he frequently has others act on his behalf (despite literally everyone else's opinion, he dislikes being considered the leader of the Network, and feels everyone is of equal importance), so he's been quite successful in flying under the radar. He agreed to meet with Inga, despite her husband often socializing with Nazis, as he's interested in using her house: It would help fill in a gap in the Network's escape routes. Inga expresses worry about her husband not being in on the plot, and about Hesse living in the household; Diamant replies that the presence of the two, and their actions limiting Nazi occupation of the property, lend Inga some plausible deniability--because this is why Dobermann is always dealing with the Nazis--they keep pushing for access to his property, partly to use it as their own tactical base and partly to try to pin down the Network, yet Dobermann resists their requests. Hesse helps him with this purely out of ignorance. When Diamant requests permission to check out the house's passageways, Inga agrees though she has no clue how he'll do it. He manages, however, and informs her that with a few tweaks, her home will become an important part of the Network. It isn't long before Inga is recruited, along with a good portion of the estate's staff, who help to guide refugees safely through. These things aren't perfect, though. Once in a while, strange persons are spotted around the property before vanishing, and Hesse and his master sergeant, Schulte, begin to notice. He also notices Inga's behavior has changed somewhat though she insists she's fine; her distraction makes Addy turn to Hesse more for attention, so he has his plate full. One of the reasons Inga is so distracted is that against her intentions, she's fallen in love with Diamant; she kisses him one day, and he admits he feels the same way for her, but he refuses to follow through: "I know you love your husband, and I know you'd never forgive yourself if we went through with this." He assures her things will be better again someday. Unfortunately, a visiting Nazi comes across evidence of the Network's activity within the household, and confronts Inga when she's alone, forcing her to shoot and kill him to defend herself. Sgt. Holt arrives--although not part of the Network, he isn't very surprised to learn of its presence, and he isn't a member of the Nazi party either so he's loyal to Inga. While they're trying to figure out what to do, Diamant--then Dobermann--show up. Awkward. Although beyond confused--as well as royally pissed off (he HATES being left in the dark)--Dobermann quickly takes charge, instructing Diamant to shuttle Inga to safety and into hiding while he and Holt come up with the cover story that she killed the Nazi in self-defense, and was herself killed in the act. Her body was taken to relatives of hers as per her own wishes. It's kind of a flimsy story but the best they can do, and they count on Lt. Hesse's loyalty to Inga to dispel any further questions. Diamant departs with Inga--she doesn't get the chance to tell Addy goodbye, which would jeopardize the plan anyway--and Dobermann and Holt implement the coverup. Just as planned, when Hesse learns of what happened, he's too shocked and grief stricken to question it much, and his devotion to the Dobermann family ensures the rest of the SS won't look too closely. Addy is especially anguished--she was much closer to her mother than to her emotionally distant and rather forbidding father--so as usual, she turns to Hesse for comforting. Between this, the rest of his work, and his dedication to Inga, he doesn't have the time or inclination to question the situation too much. If anything, his lies to Addy grow even more egregious as he tries to shield her from all the horror going on around her. Meanwhile, at first there's the concern that Inga being removed from active participation in the Network (she changes her appearance and goes into hiding as the maid of a neighbor--within walking distance of her home and family, yet unable to meet with them again) will mean an end to the Dobermann property being part of their escape system, since Dobermann himself was never part of the Network, and given all his interactions with the Nazis--not all of them negative--his allegiances are unknown. All the personal staff who've been involved are very nervous. A small group of refugees arrives at the estate, unaware of the changes that have taken place; Dobermann gets word of this and instructs they be taken to the kitchen. Everyone waits there anxiously until Dobermann appears, glares at them, then opens up an unused passageway hidden in the pantry. He instructs them to start taking a new route through the household from now on, in case the first one was compromised. They obey...and that's basically the extent of Dobermann's involvement in the Diamond Network. He allows his staff to resume operations shuttling people through, but he himself has nothing more to do with it. Although he doesn't show it, like Hesse and Addy, he's too caught up in grief over losing Inga--despite her still being alive--and despite that whole being Jewish thing. It turns out he really doesn't care about that. He would have loved and supported and protected her anyway. It's into this environment that Sgt. Gerhardt arrives, ostensibly to assist the Wehrmacht in protecting the Dobermann property, in reality to spy on Nazi activities. He gets in touch with the Trench Rats, then with the Diamond Network--the latter entirely on accident, when he notices a breeze coming out of nowhere and manages to locate one of the passageways. He explores a bit, and is surprised to come face to face with a man with numbers tattooed on his arm, who points a revolver at him and plays Russian roulette until Gerhardt panics and tells him to check the seam in his uniform under his arm. The man cuts the seam open and finds a Star of David necklace. Although Diamant thinks Gerhardt is foolish and a potential liability, he brings him on board. Gerhardt is in a precarious but decent position to know all the estate's goings-on, having befriended the other Wehrmacht soldiers present as well as socializing with Addy and Hesse. Hesse's connection to the household perplexes him, while Hesse never entirely trusts him yet tolerates his presence. He finds himself unintentionally competing with not just Hesse but another Nazi, Sgt. Wilhelm Volker, for Addy's attention--Volker is romantically interested in Addy (and is much closer to her age), while Addy is interested in Hesse (old enough to be her dad, considers himself a sort of uncle, and by now has a mistress--a genuine "maiden" of his own--anyway), and Gerhardt thinks he's just interested in getting info yet Volker is increasingly convinced he's interested in Addy too. Complicated. Both Diamant and Hesse express disapproval of Gerhardt getting too involved with Addy since both of them view themselves as her protectors, so, yeah. That's a lot of male attention for one young woman to have. Addy still clings to her dream of wedding her own noble knight, whom she's pretty sure is Hesse. When she learns of Hesse's actual love--nightclub singer Sophie Sommer--she has mixed feelings. On the one hand, she looks down on Sophie as being rather "degenerate" and lower class, definitely not good enough for Hesse; on the other hand, she envies Sophie terribly, with her pale skin and blond hair and blue eyes. Addy takes after her mother, and for the first time in her life, she's ashamed. No matter how beautiful everyone reminds her her mother was, she wants to be the Aryan ideal, rather than its exact opposite. It doesn't matter that Volker is right there, not caring that she has black hair and brown eyes; Hesse is the one she wants, and she's not good enough for him. She starts growing bitter. Visiting the city one day, she grows reckless and falls in the water, so Hesse has to jump in and swim her to safety, endangering his own life; when they return to the estate, Dobermann's only reaction to his daughter is to snap, "Foolish!" right in her face and storm off. Addy expresses her feelings to Hesse, who is sympathetic and tries hard not to embarrass her when he lets her down. Yet Addy is heartbroken. Addy finally gets her first peek at the outside world not being as normal and business-as-usual as Hesse and almost everyone else has insisted. Late one night, another visiting Nazi strays into the private part of the household and, meeting Addy by herself, attempts to assault her (she tries to scare him off by reminding him that Hesse, a well-known and decorated SS officer, lives there, at which he jeers, "Do you see him standing here right now, Fräulein?"). Before he can get far, however, a strange man with mismatched eyes pops out of the wall and puts the Nazi in a headlock, hissing, "I don't think you heard the young Fräulein right, she told you nein"--and stabs him to death. He then approaches Addy and says, "You truly don't know?--what's really on all those trains?"--indicating that he has knowledge of her private conversations with Hesse. Appropriately freaked out, Addy flees, yelling for help; she attracts the attention of the Wehrmacht officers, who come running to investigate. Helmstadt checks out the hall where Addy claims the attack occurred--yet finds nothing. No strange man, no body. Addy looks as well and there's just nothing there. The officers suggest she dreamed the incident; she's PRETTY sure she didn't, yet can think of no other explanation, so retreats to her room, bewildered and dismayed. The next day she describes the intruder to Hesse--a very thin, dark-skinned man, one light eye and one dark, with his head shaved and wearing a striped shirt with a black triangle and a "Z" on it. Hesse confides privately in Schulte--Addy has accurately described a camp prisoner, specifically one who is Zigeuner, or Roma/Sinti ("Gypsy")--people with whom she's had no contact. In other words, the Diamond Network clearly has access to the Dobermann estate, something Hesse already suspected but can't prove. He steps up security at the estate, and even ends up executing another neighbor after she's found to be concealing the whereabouts of a Network member, yet the access points to the Dobermann household remain hidden. Addy gradually picks up more knowledge of what's really going on. Gerhardt endangers himself by outing his real identity to try to convince her he knows what he's talking about when he says she can't trust Hesse and his fellow SS officers. But why should she believe this guy she knows nothing about? This American guy, no less? She tries talking to Dr. Schäfer since he's the only other person besides Hesse she finds trustworthy (plus Schäfer saved Hesse's life in the past, so he can't be that bad, for a Jew); Schäfer ends up showing her a hidden passage leading into his room. Addy had known of SOME of the passages, but just a few, and the more obvious ones. This one?--she had no clue it existed. He claims the house is riddled with them, including ones passing near her own room, and if one goes through them, they can hear her inside. So okay, that's creepy, but it explains the strange disappearing man from before, both how he appeared and disappeared so quickly as well as how he knew what Addy had discussed with Hesse. Her first meeting with Diamant is pretty awkward since it turns out it isn't her first time meeting him--she'd actually DANCED with him, at a ball that was attended by some other SS officers. Addy had been despondent that Hesse couldn't attend due to his work, when another officer asked to dance with her instead. This was Diamant, again in disguise, trying to gauge the situation at the Dobermann estate. When he left, he told her his name was Josef. Afterward, Hesse's suspicions were aroused when Addy mentioned the SS officer she danced with having black hair and brown eyes like hers--not impossible, but also not very common. On learning that his name is Josef, Hesse is especially uneasy. This would mean Diamant managed to get right into the household in broad daylight and could have even killed Addy if he'd wished. (Of course Hesse suspects him of wanting to do this, when Diamant is interested in no such thing.) Anyway, Addy doesn't react well to being confronted with evidence of so many lies all at once, especially since it means the entire world she's believed in for so long is just...fake. Lukas Mettbach is the icing on the cake, though. She recognizes Diamant's associate as the "Zigeuner"--Sinto--who'd stabbed the Nazi to death, and asked her about the trains. He has some choice words about Hesse. "Has he told you what's really on those trains yet?" he asks, and when Addy gives Hesse's answer, he laughs: "Your good SS friend is lying to you, Fräulein. You want the truth so bad? Why don't you ask him about the camps? Trains, camps, they're all the same after all." She has no idea what any of that means, but the Diamond Network is way too overwhelming for her, so she manages to escape the estate and head to the city in the hopes of finding Hesse and having him clear some things up. She runs into Major Jan Delbrück, the labor camp adjutant, instead. (Delbrück previously had a disagreement with Hesse, and the two had a duel.) He asks her what's wrong, seeming concerned, yet when she starts babbling about Hesse and trains and camps and the SS and this weird Zigeuner and everything, he seems far less interested in talking to her. When she expresses anger about how everyone is keeping her in the dark, he offers to show her the camp so she can see for herself what's really happening. (Turns out that Delbrück hates his job but does it because somebody has to, and honestly, it was far worse under the previous commandant.) Although the current commandant has attempted bettering camp conditions, Addy is still horrified to see what exactly a "labor camp" is, and Delbrück doesn't make things any easier when he mentions that there are camps far, far worse, where nobody gets out alive. The trains she likes to listen to at night are in fact full of prisoners headed to their deaths. Addy tries to excuse Hesse by saying he can't possibly know what's going on, to which Delbrück replies that the SS is responsible for the camps--ALL of them know exactly what's going on. Lukas sneaks into the Dobermann estate again, and confronts Hesse himself, stabbing him repeatedly before being scared off; Schulte finds his boss and carries him to Dr. Schäfer's room for treatment. Addy creeps in to stay by his bedside, still hoping against hope that he isn't the person everyone is saying he is. As long as she's in his company, he's the kind, selfless Hesse she's always known, and it's Lukas she finds herself angry about instead (surely, this incident means the Diamond Network truly is the terrorist organization the SS claims it is). When she's gone, however, Hesse calls in Schulte. He wants the name of the Sinto who keeps targeting the household. Schulte does some digging--i. e., terrorizing local citizens--and manages to figure out that he's Lukas Mettbach, a former prisoner of the labor camp who escaped along with Josef Diamant; his nickname is "The Cat" due to his tendency of sneaking into places undetected at night, as well as the fact he's survived as long as he has (he's been in three different camps and was never selected for death, quite a feat for a Zigeuner). Hesse plans to change that. He puts out a challenge for Lukas to respond to him. Diamant is really pissed off about the whole situation and attempts to forbid it but Lukas, who isn't quite right in the head after all the stuff he's been through, accepts the challenge, "meeting" Hesse at an abandoned church; from a safe hiding spot (I mean, he's not COMPLETELY stupid) he jeers Hesse's false sense of faith (both are Catholic, Hesse obviously non-practicing), but Hesse doesn't care. He vows to kill Lukas's entire family one by one, himself, if he has to. Lukas just laughs: "What family? Your people already killed them all. What are you going to do, SS man, dig up their ashes and kill them again?" Hesse does the next best thing--he visits the labor camp and informs a visitor, Josef Mengele, that a train full of Sinti prisoners will be arriving soon if he's interested in some new test subjects. Considering that Lukas himself is one of Mengele's victims, this action is especially nasty, even for Hesse. Addy meets Diamant again and lambastes him--the unprovoked attack on Hesse was proof that the SS was right in targeting the Diamond Network. Diamant insists Lukas acted of his own accord, but he can't deny that he himself will take action against Hesse if he has to. Addy's diatribe turns ugly and hateful, with her blaming the Zigeuner and Jews for the war and even for her mother's death; Diamant is briefly struck mute, before steeling himself and requesting her to accompany him to her neighbor's home. He wants her to meet somebody. "Another one of your Jew Network friends?" Addy jeers, to which Diamant replies, "You could say that." She knows it could be dangerous, but goes anyway. The neighbor, to Addy's surprise, greets Diamant in a friendly manner, then pales when she sees Addy; Diamant tells her that it's time, and she leaves the room. She returns a moment later with the housemaid, who looks at Addy and softly says, "Lina...?" Addy blinks--this woman is blond, but her face is unmistakable. It's Inga Dobermann. So this is when Addy learns that not only is the "noble" SS shipping people off to camps to be murdered en masse and Hesse MUST know about it, and most of her own household is involved in an underground network attempting to thwart this, but her mother is still alive as well, and is part of this network, and oh, that's right, she's Jewish. Making Louis Dobermann a criminal who broke the racial hygiene laws, and Addy herself a Jew, too. Suddenly a lot of things make sense. Addy is overjoyed to have her mother back, but the rest of it...she doesn't know what to think. Things have obviously reached a turning point, with Lukas's actions endangering the Network's activities and Allied forces reported to be drawing close to the city, so Diamant decides it's time for the Dobermann family to move to safety. Inga's return to the estate catches almost everyone off guard, but the two who react the strongest are Lt. Hesse, and PFC Helmstadt. Hesse, shocked to learn of his old friend being alive--and Jewish--stumbles at first but then orders Sgt. Volker to help him take the Dobermanns into custody; Diamant shoots and wounds Volker as a warning. Hesse pulls his own gun--but Addy jumps into his line of fire and he hesitates, unable to shoot her. Then Helmstadt draws his gun, screaming that Dobermann, who he served so loyally, is nothing but a filthy race traitor, and attempts to execute him right there. Volker shoots and kills him, and Diamant shoots and kills Hesse. Addy cries out in anguish but she, her parents, and Dr. Schäfer are quickly spirited away by Diamant and Sgt. Gerhardt while the other Wehrmacht officers remain behind to keep any approaching Nazis off their trail. They make use of their own hidden passageways and Network assistance to escape to the mountains, where they remain in hiding as the city falls to the Allies...sans Diamant, however, who returns to assist in the liberation of some of the final prisoners, but ends up captured himself. Lukas and the other members of the Network fail to save him and can only watch helplessly as the SS force him onto a train and carry him away to be terminated. Addy realizes that, despite her lingering feelings for Hesse, she never could have been with him. She finds she has similar feelings, albeit free of all her childish fantasies of knights and maidens, for Sgt. Gerhardt. He's never shown any overt romantic interest in her, but his words and actions, including risking his life and position by revealing his true identity to her, make it clear he cares about her as well. They marry after the war ends, making the mountain town their new home, and are surprised when a gift belatedly arrives through the post: matching wedding rings, and a jack of diamonds card. The Allies managed to stop one of the final prisoner trains from reaching the extermination camp, and Josef Diamant is still alive. Major SPOILERS for the ending of the story here, which is where the plot kind of goes off the rails. I've never discussed this part of the story so directly as I will here, and after all the previous stuff it might not be what one would expect from this series, so, you were warned. Not long after, the events of the final story arc, Ultima Thule, take place. I'm not sure what role exactly Addy plays in this yet, though she and her parents do accompany Gerhardt, Diamant, and several others to the Alpine Fortress after hearing that the Nazis' medical experiment "Project Doomsday," now renamed Project Ultima Thule, is still going, under the guidance of Nazi doctors who escaped capture by the Allies. Project Doomsday, which focused on the creation of an "übermensch" or super soldier with heightened intelligence, strength, stamina, and ability to withstand pain, has shifted focus after receiving input from Dr. Mengele; Project Ultima Thule is now attempting the literal resurrection and immortality of its subjects. (In other words, ZOMBIE NAZIS! Just kidding. Sort of. The term "zombie" is never used anywhere in this story, I promise.) The project is unfortunately already well under way by the time the remaining Allies get involved (the Trench Rats send their own group to deal with the rodent faction of the Nazi doctors at the same time), and they're horrified to learn that the original project's main limitation, the serum working only on a specific, extremely rare blood type, has been overcome, making the improved serum effective on anyone with an intact brain. Er, yep. Literally all you require is your brain to be in one piece. This explains why someone like Master Sergeant Schulte, who was shot in the head by a Diamond Network member before he could leave the city, isn't part of the project...yet Lt. Hesse and PFC Helmstadt, who were both shot in the chest, are. (Presumably, after Addy and the others fled, their bodies were taken away by Nazis involved in the project.) Bizarrely, the group finds these two alive again, though they're wearing strange new uniforms: Since the SS funded and oversaw the project, participants, whether they're SS or not, have been outfitted in unusual white Schutzstaffel uniforms (perhaps to match the snowy environment) with a broken sun cross swastika, the emblem of the Thule Society. Not all bugs in the project have been worked out yet; living subjects who are given the serum look and behave the same as before, whereas those who were brought back to life acquire a hazy blue tint to their eyes (similar to how the eyes cloud over after death), have no memory of their previous life, and, well, act quite zombielike, mute and blindly obedient to whatever orders they've been programmed with or given, even if it results in injury or termination. (Immortality isn't absolute--if the brain is destroyed, they die again.) (Fun fact, this part here is likely similar to the programming Lance Corporal Doomsday Rat went through combined with the original serum.) So, here's Addy's friend Hesse again, except he's basically a Nazi zombie and he can't be reasoned with since he doesn't recognize anyone except as a target. Project members are skilled at protecting their heads from attack so it's near impossible for the group to kill him, despite them wounding him repeatedly. (They aren't aware yet of this weakness anyway.) The Trench Rats faction ends up assisting here, when their chief surgeon, Burgundy, discovers that a particular drug (I haven't figured out which yet) has a sort of countereffect on the serum, wiping the subjects' programming and making them conscious and autonomous again. The group gets hold of this drug and uses it on Hesse. It sparks quite an unusual reaction, seeming incredibly painful...yet after it wears off, he sits up and immediately feels at his chest, then starts looking around himself in a panic, demanding to know where he is and what's happening. When asked what's the last thing he remembers, he thinks hard, saying, "Cold...sunlight...Sophie...you, shooting me"--glaring at Diamant. He has no memory of being resurrected for the project, and insists he had no knowledge of its continuation in this new form--he was never involved in Project Doomsday. He's devastated to learn that not only has the Third Reich fallen, but his good friend Schulte, as well as Sophie--and their unborn child--are dead. (Sophie committed suicide after learning of Hesse's death.) At first he refuses to help the group, seeing he has no purpose left, until Gerhardt points something out: When Hesse listed the last things he remembered as he died, he mentioned Sophie, standing in the sunlight. Neither he nor Sophie were anywhere near each other at the times of their deaths. This seems to indicate an afterlife might exist, and Sophie is waiting for him there.* If he can help them find a way to end the project, he might also be able to find peace. Hesse is skeptical, but agrees. (*Like in my other storylines, passing over isn't an instantaneous process. Hesse died before Sophie, but not that long before, plus there's a "purgatory" period for certain individuals like Hesse, which could explain this discrepancy. WTF is all this? This is me envisioning a happier ending for my characters who were completely screwed over at the end, because it really does bother me that much. Shut up and let me envision.) The group meets up with some of the others they'd left behind, including the Dobermanns. Both Hesse and Addy are stunned to meet each other again; Addy actually creeps back behind her mother, which crushes Hesse inside. She no longer sees him as the knight come to rescue her, or even as her trusted uncle. Still, he resolves to try to help them destroy the project. This includes dealing with the resurrected Helmstadt, who antagonizes them throughout much of the story as they have no success getting him the antidote until later--and it turns out to make no real difference, since he's still devoted to the failed Nazi cause (despite NEVER BEING A MEMBER OF THE PARTY, what is up with you, Helmstadt). This entire plotline is still quite vague, so I'm not sure of all that happens, but I do know that Hesse ends up sacrificing himself somehow to ensure the project headquarters will be destroyed while the others escape--probably this involves rigging or setting off some sort of destructive device while keeping Helmstadt at bay. As the snow and ice cascade down at him he shuts his eyes and murmurs, "Sophie," before being buried (and, presumably, crushed to death along with Helmstadt); similarly, Dobermann sacrifices himself so both he and Diamant don't end up falling to their deaths, though before he does, he tells Diamant to look after Inga. He knows the two of them love each other. (These scenarios played themselves out in my head some time after I finished typing this. I believe now what happens is that Diamant nearly falls anyway after Dobermann forces him to let him go, but is then pulled to safety by Hesse; so I typed those out of order, and Hesse is the second one to go.) There's a massive explosion and avalanche after the group reaches safety, and it's assumed everyone else remaining within, the Nazi doctors and whatever other test subjects they have (along with Major Ludolf Jäger, who led the rodent faction the Trench Rats were dealing with), are killed. Projects Doomsday and Ultima Thule are finally brought to an end, but not before Addy loses two of the most important people in her life; despite their victory, the group heads back home to mourn. ...Hey look at that, I wrote a bunch of crap anyway. [Adelina Dobermann 2022 [Friday, June 3, 2022, 5:48:16 AM]] 7/3/24: r/SketchDaily theme, "Someone's Family Portrait." This took me 5.5hrs, somebody please enjoy it. ;_; The (von) Dobermann family, Louis, Inga, and Adelina. [Dobermann Family Portrait [Wednesday, July 3, 2024, 1:20:06 AM]] |